A look at how the ten riders to watch for 2025 fared, both for their riding and where they stood in relation to the predictions and expectations set in January.
Was the transfer of Juan Ayuso the most memorable thing he did in the year? At the start of the season he was sat in a gilded cage at UAE, well paid but without the freedoms he wanted. Now he has resolved this after being sprung by prodigious amounts of cash from Lidl-Trek, ready to enjoy income and freedoms, at the price of pressure and expectation. It’s certainly recent news and a topic to think about over winter but he had results too.
He won Tirreno-Adriatico, finished second in Catalunya and took two Vuelta stages in solo style as the glass-half-full scenario, he’s now able to win mountain stages and time trials alike. The glass-empty side was the Giro, his prime goal and he did win a stage but an early crash ruined his GC chances and he later left the race.
January’s blog post suggested Ayuso might have a sore neck from looking over his shoulder and Isaac Del Toro’s rise in the Giro probably helped ease Ayuso’s departure as the Mexican looks so promising. He was a rider to watch for 2025 but next year promises to be as interesting if not more to see if he can deliver and how he’ll collaborate with new team mates, all on a team that’s now looking almost as crowded at the top too.
Tom Pidcock was a big name in the Ineos exodus and one part of his move to Q36.5 was to have the freedom to race as he pleases rather than the obligation to grind out grand tour results. The irony was he finished on the podium in the Vuelta in a year where he didn’t finish worse than sixth overall in a stage race and didn’t have many wins along the way. He probably rode the Giro out of duty after his team got a late wildcard.
We can see the results but the unseen change was in management and culture with the new team and it seems to have suited him. Again 2026 looks interesting as his team are automatic invites for the top races and he’ll want to be active in many events, the question of what he targets is open right now and as the clear leader he and management will be working out what sounds fun. There’s a wider issue here with a rider leaving the World Tour and a big-budget team and thriving and lessons for others who might fancy trying, and one component is moving with an entourage of staff rather than riders.
Is Arnaud De Lie a sprinter? That was the question in January and whether Lotto could spare him from contesting hectic bunch sprints given they had sufficient UCI points so that he could be better deployed in the classics and for the kind of finishes that really suit him and so avoid crash risks. Only things were more complicated and at one point he questioned if he wanted to ride a bike.
He suffered injury and then spiralled into borderline depression. He told L’Equipe in July that he had to stop riding the bike in spring and had a “huge feeling of disgust towards cycling”, saying sometimes he might question what he was doing during a mountain stage but once he reached the finish he could take satisfaction and see some fun, but this time “I hated what I was doing”. Depression, burn out? That’s for professionals to diagnose and De Lie didn’t enter a clinical procedure but instead retreated to the family farm and didn’t ride his bike for a while. It worked and he soon enjoyed riding again and while success wasn’t there at the Tour de France, it built him up for a win in the Renewi Tour in August, taking the final stage and overall after beating Mathieu van der Poel.
Marc Hirschi‘s move to Tudor came with questions about whether he could assume leadership and advance towards winning races longer than 200km. He started well, winning his first race with the team… but it was the 184km Classica Valenciana. Illness in Tirreno-Adriatico spoiled his spring. Tudor got a wildcard for the Giro partly on the promise of Hirschi but he had to miss it as the team deemed him unready. The Tour de Suisse was a struggle and he had a discreet in the Tour de France too. Worse, come the autumnal races in Italy where he’d seemed unstoppable a year ago now he could only manage one second place. Having started the year in sixth place on the UCI rankings he fell to 56th. It’s tempting to blast his signing as a flop but it’s nuanced by illness and the perils of leadership, it’s often easier to be a lieutenant than a general. The real answer probably depends on what he can do next year.
Could Olav Kooij turn from a carp into a dragon? You’ll have to read January’s piece for the folklore reference but he delivered but hasn’t finished the year as the fire-breathing sprinter to terrify others. He delivered 11 wins, and all on a team that can’t commit to every sprint going. He’s a modern sprinter who is agile on short climbs but so is Matthew Brennan who apparently can push the same watts but weighs 4-5kg less so you can see why the Dutch team did not fight hard to retain him. It’ll be interesting to see him in the classics for Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale but he and they would sign up for the consistency show this year, just as long as it extends to a Tour de France sprint win.
Could Kévin Vauquelin be freed from scoring in small races and instead begin to show signs of a being a grand tour contender? Yes indeed but it happened in a roundabout way. He still needed to win for confidence and to give his team some cheer as they hunted for sponsors and landed the modest 2.1-rated Pays de La Loire stage race in April. The story is well told by L’Equipe’s podcast where went into the Amstel Gold Race soon after only to abandon which saw him roasted by management because others had worked so hard for him. Days later he finished second in the Flèche Wallonne, a repeat result from the previous year, but as the photo suggests a better result. Much of the improvement has been in terms of mentality, there’s no manual or youtube tutorial on how to assume team leadership, but he seemed to get the feel of it during the year, including coping with setbacks.
He finished second in the Tour de Suisse after taking three minutes on eventual winner João Almeida on the opening stage. By then he’d signed for Ineos and since incriminated them for helping him on the road at times here although not loudly enough to warrant a De Bondt-style UCI investigation.
Vauquelin enjoyed an exceptional Tour de France, much of it in the spotlight, seventh place overall albeit over twenty minutes down. Did this show his limits where he was among the best in the opening phase but receded in the high mountains or can he make gains here? Again if this post is a review, it’s the future that is more tantalising… all assuming he’s over the broken leg suffered at home which meant his season finished in July.
Pelayo Sánchez was supposed to improve on 2024, only he quit almost as many races has he finished and his season was such that there’s not even a decent picture to accompany these words from the RCS, ASO or Getty libraries. His best result was 33rd on a stage of the Boucles de la Mayenne. He had a concatenation of health problems: knee pain, Lyme disease and shingles. He said the knee issue saw him train harder to come back, which left him weaker for the borelia bacteria which in turn gave the zoster virus the opportunity it had been waiting for. Hopefully he’s recovered and set for better next year.
Ethan Hayter joined Soudal-Quickstep and the vision in January was whether he could get back to racing “wolfpack” style, hustling for wins here and there, the kind that saw him contend for World Tour stage race wins and pick of select bunch sprints with ease. Only this year he opted out of the bustle of fighting for position and instead took all his wins and all but one of his top-10s in time trials. So he was almost a mini-Remco but this included beating Filippo Ganna in the Belgium Tour, a result that will have thrilled his team. He did try in breakaways too but of course they’re often doomed. In short things did not turn out as planned but he’s found a valuable niche, one that will become even more important now that Evenepoel has left.
It was only in the summer that the cartoon by Martin Vidberg above depicted Lenny Martinez burdened by the weight of French expectations. Now his phone barely rings while Paul Seixas gets all the bother. Martinez had a good season, wins in Paris-Nice, Romandie, the Dauphiné and the Japan Cup probably saw him matching expectations. In March his Paris-Nice win in the vicious uphill finish was a triumph for a puncheur but could he he become a grimpeur? Yes or oui as we saw this in Romandie and his win in the Dauphiné’s final stage was exquisite for the cruelty of the way he played Enric Mas, he’s not someone to play poker against.
Picking off wins here and there is something most would like to manage but he’s got a contract at Bahrain to become a GC contender and this is the hard part. Indeed we got a glimpse of this in July when going for the mountains competition got too much, he started to make unforced errors, whether tactical or that infamous “sticky bottle“. There’s money in trying to follow the likes of Pogačar for as long as possible but will he try this or go for wins and polka-dots again?
Cian Uijtdebroeks was already a big talent that was dropping off the radar and 2025 saw him reverse the trend, just. He was almost Kylian Horspantalon given he rode a très French calendar leading to his first pro win at the Tour de l’Ain, riding the field of his wheel on the Grand Colombier. Arguably like Ayuso he made the news as much for his transfer as results with a surprise move to Movistar. You’d imagine the team’s staff are fretting how to spell his name but they have a Dutchman in Sjors Beukeboom running digital communications and it’ll be interesting to see if he’s learning Spanish, as while English is the peloton’s language it’ll help him integrate. His win has got him back on track and the move to Movistar will see him able to pick his calendar.
The post also rattled through a few other names. Among them Florian Lipowitz delivered big in the Tour to the point that Red Bull hiring Remco Evenepoel can be questioned, at least to see what the answers tell us for next season. Thibau Nys had an easy win in the GP Miguel Indurain and some top-10s in the Ardennes but back in January the question was if he could contest wins in the Tour’s opening week, he started but discovered it was all on another intensity. Tom Donnenwirth was mentioned as a curious neo-pro aged 26 who’d only started racing recently and he got a win this year, a small cheer during Groupama-FDJ’s poor year. Caleb Ewan came and went, a surprise signing for Ineos, two wins and then a mid-season retirement, the “Predictions for 2025” mentioned riders can earn so much these days they can retire early and he’s a case in point.
I´m at the point with Uijtdebroeks as to being undecided if it is/was a breakthrough/comeback. I hope his (next) new team isn´t as confused as I am. 😉 I´m not trying to be mean to the young man, but he seems to me to be the opposite of all the cases quoted of the amazing young breakthrough talents and their boundless self confidence. From the outside at least, his seems to be a case of too much too soon if only for the very high expectations he places upon himself.
I think his win showed some injuries overcome and he was solid in other races too but “the new Evenepoel” tag from the early days has faded. After Visma bought out his contract the move to Movistar feels not quite like a last chance but a big deal as there won’t be much waiting time or support roles, it’s leadership early on.
As IR explains almost all of Hayter’s 2025 points came in time trials, or in GC classifications thanks to his time trial prowess. Soudal-QS will probably consider that decent value, but what happened to the rider who was so strong in punchy sprints an 2021 and 2022? Has he opted out of the risks required to fight for position in sprints and accepted that he’s more at ease as a ‘lone ranger’?
Seems so. He didn’t like the pressure of having to rub shoulders and elbows in the finish and might not be ruthless enough for it. If he can deliver in other ways then it’s working for him. He didn’t win from the breakaway but he could find opportunities here from hard fought moves that go early in the day, a “Ben Healy day” only he can still sprint.
Given his success in the madison and other chaotic track events that surprises me. But its another thing to do it on the road, and I’m certainly not brave enough to have done either. He seems a rider of out of time – the “last product of British Cycling”. But I’ve enjoyed his success this year and hope a Remco-less QS gives him a platform to more.
I’ll be looking out for his brother too, recently signed to Hincapie’s team – a rider to watch for 2026?
I’ll be amazed if either Uijtdebroeks or Ayuso ever win a grand tour. Once a rider (or other sportsperson) has shown themselves to be flaky, with nothing ever being perfect enough for them and thus changing teams, they rarely form a successful career.
And Ayuso has shown a number of times that he will not work for others. I’ll be surprised if Ayuso is still in the sport at the end of his contract (2030). Once he’s still not winning, blaming others and has earned enough money, I can’t see him having the stones for it.